June 2005 Archives

Judith Miller in cursor.org parody photo referring to her tendency to print dubious WMD intelligence from Ahmed Chalabi, Bush's favorite iraqi exile before the war and allegation he now spys for Iran.

Yesterday the Supreme Court refused to hear appeals about the most important Freedom of the Press case in recent memory. It appears very likely that two reporters, the New York Times' Judith Miller and Time's Matt Cooper, are heading to jail for refusing to tell a federal prosecutor who told them that Valerie Plame was an undercover agent for the Central Intelligence Agency. The informant was almost certainly a Bush Administration hack trying to smear Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, who had recently gone public with doubts about iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

The cases are ironic to the point of parody. Judith Miller never even wrote an article. Matt Cooper's article in Time criticized the Bush Administration for engineering the leak. These were the responsible journalists and they're the ones going to jail? Robert Novak, the journalist who actually did out Plame's CIA employment, is not under investigation or under threat of jail. Observers think that the federal prosecutor actually knows the identity of the informant but as of this date, this person hasn't been charged.

It's not an easy case. I frequently questioned Judith Miller's shoddy reporting during this time. She relied on shady off-the-record public officials way too much. She never heard a weapons of mass destruction story she didn't believe. She was guilable and time has proven she was wrong. Good reporting consists of more than sitting around a White House water cooler and printing the spin from the bottom-feeding political hacks trying to get a story in the Times. But she is a reporter for a major paper. She's done a lot of good work. She shouldn't go to jail simply for talking to someone. Sometimes those shady conversations in White House basements do lead to important journalism and we need to protect that.

And in all the court manoeuvrings we're forgetting that someone exposed a CIA agent, her undercover assignments and her network of on-the-ground informers, all to play politics in Washington. Someone very near the White House committed treason. Shouldn't that be the big story?

Update:

Apparently Matt Cooper's notes indicate that Presidential right-hand man Karl Rove is one of the sources behind the leak.

Alice the Public Quaker writes a beautiful post reminding us that we don't need to cut straight to the cross:

It's struck me recently that living the life of Christ doesn't mean going straight for Holy Week and the cross. I think He had 30 years of living inside love's power before he took that walk. I know that I'm only just starting to understand Love's power, so maybe I shouldn't be too hasty for it to take me to healing the sick and transforming the earth.

Josh talks about his personal experience wrestling with how his Baltimore Yearly Meeting would address Friends United Meeting policies on sexuality:

My inner Sanhedrin has been debating the issue for what will be 3 years this August. At first, the consensus of my inner counsel was "String the bastards up!", but that diluted to having BYM leave FUM. That then faded to us "Teaching them a lesson" somehow, but staying involved. This course of change from "String 'em up" to "Teach 'em a lesson" occured in just ONE WEEK! After my inner Sanhedrin was allowed to season, it became more divided.

Update: a few days ago I linked to a blog by Naaman the Ex-Leper. He grew up as a Friend in Baltimore Yearly Meeting but now describes himself as a "universalist-turned-conservative-Christian." I'm always interested in stories of why Friends leave our religious society and there was some good back-and-forth about whether a more strong-articulated Quakerism might have kept him in (no, which is fair enough). He's followed up with a very thoughtful post explaining why he thinks true Christian Universalism is impossible. I don't agree but reading it is a good reminder of how carelessly we liberal Friends sometimes apply the concept of universalism and how it too often comes to mean an abandonment of all judgements theological (he links to an interfaith FGC pamphlet that I've never found terribly convincing). I would venture that Naaman has engaged and wrestled with Quakerism a more than a lot of us still within it, which perhaps is the norm for thoughtful leavers.

And for those that haven't noticed the shuffling of furniture that's been going on here, the nonviolence.org/Quaker page is now a Quaker "links blog," with sidebar photos and bookmarks pulled from various "social" networks (join one and add your stuff!). There's an RSS feed so you can easily keep up with the the posts I find interesting.

The offices of Friends General Conference are across the street from the Pennsylvania Convention Center, which is this week hosting a biotech convention. The streets outside are hosting a bit of a counter-convention led by a group named BioDemocracy 2005. Here are some shots from a melee outside our front door a few minutes ago.

Update: apparently one of the police officers at the center of this scuffle suffered a heart attack and has since died. I'm not even sure how to comment on that. From my vantage point it certainly seemed like the police officers were using undue violence. But while I was ten feet away I don't know who threw the first punch and what exactly happened in that sea of bodies. Whatever happened, it's quite appropriate to hold him and his family in our prayers.

Protesters and police scuffle at the Biodemocracy Rally in Philadelphia. The well-dressed (and hatted) people are the civil affairs police officers. Apparently one of them suffered a heart attack in the meele and had to be evacuated on stretcher. See the full photo set here.

Update: The Philadelphia Inquirer is reporting that one of the police officers at the center of this scuffle has died of an apparent heart attack

An early edition of "Nonviolence Web Upfront," which debuted December 29, 1997.

I started Nonviolence.org in late 1995 as a place to publicize the work of the US peace movement which was not getting out to a wide (or a young) audience. I built and maintained the websites of a few dozen hosted groups (including the War Resisters League, Fellowship of Reconciliation and Pax Christi USA) but I quickly realized that the Nonviolence.org homepage itself could be used for more than just as a place to put links to member groups. I realized I could highlight the articles I thought should get more publicity, whether on or off the Nonviolence.org domain. The homepage adapted into what is now a recognizable blog format on December 29, 1997 when I re-named the homepage "Nonviolence Web Upfront" and started posting links to interesting articles from Nonviolence.org member groups. In response to a comment the other day I wondered how that fit in with the evolution of blogging. I was shocked to learn from Wikipedia's article on weblog that the first use of the term occured on December 29, 1997--yes, the same day!

I think is less a coincidence than a confirmation that many of us were trying to figure out a format for sharing the web with others. Below is an excerpt from the email announcement for "Nonviolence Web Upfront." The reliable Archive.org has index of Upfront's second week, whose feature was a guest piece by John Steitz, Is the Nonviolence Web a Movement Half-Way House that sounds eerily similar to recent discussions on Quaker Ranter.

On electronic fellowships, online magazines and the freedom of this patchwork of independent cross-linked blogs: "Maybe the web's form of hyperlinking is actually superior to Old Media publishing. I love how I can put forward a strong vision of Quakerism without offending anyone--any put-off readers can hit the "back" button. With my Subjective Guide to Quaker Blogs and my On the Web posts I highlight the bloggers I find particularly interesting, even when I'm not in perfect theological unity. I like that I can have discussions back and forth with Friends who I don't exactly agree with. I have nothing to announce, no clear plan forward and no money to do anything anyway. But I thought it'd be interesting to hear what others have been thinking along these lines."

The new Quaker Life has an article by Charles W. Heavilin asking Where's the Power of the Lord Now?

In our postmodern, fragmented world, where now is the power of the Lord among Quakers? There is a vast divide between the accounts of early Friends and that of contemporary Friends. Most modern Quaker reporting is perfunctory — accounts with the spiritual quality of recipes in a cookbook. Conversations at Quaker gatherings now revolve around declining attendance or bleak assessments of the spiritual shallowness of society. Seldom, if ever, is there any mention of the power of the Lord.

Great stuff. He gets into the way our culture has negatively influenced Friends. After you read it check out C Wess Daniel's commentary on the article:

Simply put, I think we need to learn the stories of the Quaker church once again, and begin to tell them, live them, and move forward in this tradition that has been past down to us as one that has been formed by the Spirit of Christ through such wonderful leaders as Fox, Fell, Barclay, Woolman, etc.

I recently read a New York Times article on the resurging phenomenon of nurse-ins, designed to highlight the lack of laws giving mothers the right to nurse in public. Little did I realize a plain dressing Quaker near Grand Rapids Michigan was at the center of its nurse-in! From the local (link-unfriendly) newspaper:

As a Quaker woman, Jennifer Seif lives a modest and simple life. Breastfeeding is natural to her, and she has nursed her children while in the grocery store, the doctor's office and during Quaker meetings without a problem. So the Grand Rapids woman was shocked and embarrassed in April when Kent County Clerk Mary Beth Hollinrake approached her while she was breastfeeding her infant son, Micah..."It's shocking to me that anyone would be offended." The mother of three said she was wearing a cape dress -- a garment designed for discreet nursing...

I learned about this through the blog of Jenn and her husband Scott. Here's Jenn's post on the incident. For those wondering about their local protection, the La Leche League has a fabulous state-by-state listing of the nursing laws.

For comparison, Theo in Second Month 2003 and last week

They say second children don't get as much attention and that parents forget to take many photographs of them. We want to avoid that so we'll get an early start with some ultrasounds. They always look a little scary to me but I take solace that Theo looked just as skeletal but turned out pretty cute.  

 

 

 

Today's Washington Post has an article claiming that the Army is "bungling recruitment. The continuing stream of combat deaths in iraq make the armed forces a less attractive option than they once were:

Nearly every day, anywhere from one to several U.S. soldiers or Marines die in iraq, and even more are wounded. The news doesn't always make the front pages anymore, but the casualty rate has apparently registered deeply in the consciousness of young Americans and their families. The result is a dangerous decline in new enlistments that is depleting U.S. military resources and weakening our capacity to face additional conflicts or threats from abroad.

In many ways, it's great that the army is becoming unpopular again! Some pacifists extrapolate this to say the draft will have to be reinstated soon but I think this is unlikely, as the Army and Congress know the outcry and mass protests that would erupt. The short term effect will be sloppier procedures on the ground, as too few soldiers stretched too thin take shortcuts that inevitably result in unnecessary deaths and more atrocities in the prisons.

Is there a way the peace movement could take advantage of the growing unease and worry about life in the military to open conversations and get our message out to a wider audience?

www.flickr.com

Click on any of the pictures above for captions, etc. Here's the photoset of our whole trip. Apologies to all the Theo fans (you know who you are) for not getting these up sooner.

Summer visitations got an early start last month when the Northeast US Quaker blogroll converged in my back yard with no agenda to follow and no epistle to write.Front row: James, Jeffrey and visitation ringleader Amanda. Back: Ryan, Rob, Me, Theo and poor blogless Christina.

Well since Kwakersaur is inaugurating the I don't have anything to post meme, I'll chime in that I don't either. Actually I've written two and half essays but realized they're both really for myself. This is how it happens sometimes. I've long noticed this phenomenon in fully-formed verbal ministry that I know I'm not supposed to deliver and it feels as if such restraint is sometimes healthy on the blog. The message will reappear in other forums I'm sure, most likely next month's Gathering workshop with Zachary Moon.

In the meantime, there's been fresh talk about plain language and dress this week by Johan Maurer, Claire Reddy and the Livejournal Quakers. Russ Nelson's started a Planet Quaker blog aggregator (which includes Quaker Ranter: thanks!). LizOpp talked about field testing her upcoming Quaker identity Gathering workshop at Northern Yearly Meeting sessions and Kiara's talked about being field tested by Liz at this year's NYM sessions (how cool is that?!).

I've been geeking out on Del.icio.us, the "social bookmarking" system and on the esoteric concepts of tags, the semantic web and folksonomies. Two weeks ago I would have laughed at these neologisms but I'm beginning to see that there's something in all this. The only outward form the regulars will see is a more accurate "Related Entries" selection at the bottom of posts (thanks to Adam Kalsey) and better visibility in selected Technorati entries (which will get less me-centric as I finish tagging my own back posts).

And of course we're tilling the field, planting a garden, putting up laundry lines and otherwise thoroughly enjoying the first Spring in our new house. It's bedtime, off to read the radically folksonomic adventures of Sam and My Car (it's pure tags: "My name is Sam." "This is my car." "I love my car." I'd worry that not-so-baby Theo is getting too excited by combusion engines if he weren't even more excited by "dia-di-calschht" aka the "bicycle" Papa rides off to work on.)

Deep Throat in an 1958 FBI publicity photo. From Wikipedia

One of the greatest political mysteries of the Twentieth Century was revealed this week as Vanity Fair revealed the identity of Deep Throat, the government informer who led Washington Post reporters onto the full scope of the Watergate Scandal. Here's the Post's own article on the revealing.

Although I was far too young to follow the events at the time, the Washington Post stories combined with the followup book and movie to create a popular images of the fearless investigative reporter, the showdowy government insider with unclear motives and the newspaper publishers taking a risk for the big story.

So it seems ironic that Deep Throat--no excuse me, W. Mark Felt, the number two man at the FBI in the early 1970s--was a close assistant of the notorious FBI head J. Edgar Hoover and was himself convicted in 1980 for authorizing government agents to break into homes of suspected anti-Vietnam war protesters (looking for suspects from the radical Weather Underground bombings).